NASA turns 55: An Ars Technica tribute to space flight

A half-century of missions, from Mercury to the Mars Science Laboratory and beyond.

This week, NASA celebrated its 55th anniversary. On July 29, 1958, President Eisenhower signed into law the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which authorized the creation of a new civilian agency named the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The act formalized the United States' predominantly military space operations and also marked the end of the 42-year-old National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which previously provided oversight on the existing disparate pre-spaceflight activities underway across the country.

NASA's foundation came at a time when tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union were significantly ramping up. The launch of Sputnik by the Soviets in October 1957 has a clear subtext beneath the scientific overtones—the Soviets controlled the high ground and could overfly the United States from orbit with total impunity. Nuclear war was considered a real possibility, and its likelihood would only increase over the next five years.

Although it was a civilian agency, NASA's formation was a highly political action—as was its goal. Thanks to conversations between President Kennedy and Deputy Director Hugh Dryden, the agency was targeted almost from its inception at landing Americans on the moon. The accomplishment would be mostly symbolic—at least at first—but it had two hidden bonuses. First, the estimated cost of tens of billions of tax dollars pumped into private industry across the country would ensure its popularity with the US people. More importantly, it was also designed to force the Soviets to spend their own money on a matching effort, the existence of which the Soviets denied until just before the USSR's dissolution.

Running out of the gate: Mercury and Gemini

In the early years, all roads led to Apollo... but those roads were utterly unmapped. In order to land on the moon, NASA engineers and managers designed a decade-long set of tests to figure out how to create the materials, procedures, and technology necessary to land on the moon. The first step was proving humans could survive and operate in space; to that end, Project Mercury started with seven highly trained pilots and transformed them into the United States' first astronauts. Shepard, Grissom, Cooper, Schirra, Slayton, Glenn, and Carpenter—many of the names, even today, still have a celebrity ring to them. The seven Mercury astronauts were treated as heroes and gods by the media of the day, and even though Project Mercury didn't put a human in space before the Soviets managed it, it blazed its own parallel trail as fast as their rockets could take them.

After Mercury came Project Gemini, with bigger spacecraft and more ambitious missions. Gemini's goal was to prove that humans could survive outside of their spacecraft (something which the Soviets again did first), and also to allow NASA to figure out how rendezvous in orbit worked—knowledge absolutely critical to landing on the moon.

Gemini and Mercury were stunning successes. We were on our way.

NASA

Alan B. Shepard takes flight in Freedom 7 on May 5, 1961. Shepard's 15-minute suborbital flight marks the first manned Mercury mission and the first time an American entered space. Keenly aware of the political pressure to have a successful launch, Shepard is (apocryphally) credited with coining "Shepard's Prayer" shortly before the launch.

NASA

Alan B. Shepard takes flight in Freedom 7 on May 5, 1961. Shepard's 15-minute suborbital flight marks the first manned Mercury mission and the first time an American entered space. Keenly aware of the political pressure to have a successful launch, Shepard is (apocryphally) credited with coining "Shepard's Prayer" shortly before the launch.

NASA

The second Mercury flight, Gus Grissom in Liberty Bell 7, did not end as successfully as Shepard's. The spacecraft's hatch blew out shortly after splashdown, almost drowning Grissom and causing the capsule to be lost beneath the ocean's surface. Grissom is pictured here on the deck of the recovery ship, the USS Randolph, with no small amount of emotion visible on his face. Later investigation proved conclusively that Grissom was not responsible for the hatch's failure; he remained in the astronaut corps and was a front-runner to command the first moon landing attempt.

NASA

John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, inspects his capsule (Friendship 7) during training.

NASA

The first two manned suborbital Mercury flights used the small Redstone missile to carry the spacecraft and astronaut on a parabolic arc; orbital Mercury flights needed the larger Atlas rocket to provide enough delta-v to reach orbit. Pictured here is a Mercury test capsule perched atop an Atlas-D booster.

NASA

After Mercury came Gemini. The larger Gemini spacecraft held two astronauts instead of one, seated side-by-side with the commander on the left, just as in an airplane. Here, Jim McDivitt and Ed White simulate a Gemini launch during training.

NASA

Gemini VI launches on its Titan II rocket. Gemini VI and VII were launched closely together and were both in orbit at the same time; NASA used the two spacecraft to test and refine its rendezvous procedures. It is the only time two US spacecraft have operated in orbit at the same time (excepting shuttle / ISS operations).

During Gemini IV, in June of 1965, Astronaut Ed White became the first American to "spacewalk"—to leave the confines of a spacecraft and operate outside, performing what has come to be known as extravehicular activity, or EVA.

NASA

Patricia McDivitt and Patricia White, wives of Jim McDivitt and Ed White, were on hand at the Mission Operations and Control Room during part of the Gemini IV mission. They were able to speak to their husbands over the air-to-ground radio.

NASA

NASA Flight Director Gene Kranz sits at his console in the MOCR during Gemini V in August, 1965.

Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott hang out in their Gemini VII spacecraft after splashdown, awaiting recovery.

The giant leap

Project Apollo flew toward its goal with sure feet—until the entire program was halted with the deaths of Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee in the Apollo 1 fire. Critically called "a failure of imagination," the fire was technically the result of frayed wiring sparking in an environment of pure, pressurized oxygen—but more correctly, the fire was the result of NASA management and engineers moving too fast to meet what seemed like an impossible end-of-decade deadline.

However, the stumble was short-lived. With new rules in place and an improved spacecraft, NASA gathered itself up and, through the combined efforts of more than 400,000 men and women scattered through all corners of the US, won the race. On July 20, 1969, just shy of eight years after President Kennedy's special address to Congress where the moon landing was officially announced to the public, humans set foot on another world for the first time in the history of our species.

NASA

The crew of Apollo 1: Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. All three were killed on January 27, 1967 by a fire during what was supposed to have been a routine ground test of the Block 1 Apollo command and service module. In order to simulate the vehicle's pressure while in vacuum, the cabin was pressurized with 16.7 PSI of pure oxygen. A tiny spark from frayed wiring rapidly transformed the capsule's interior into an inferno. The crew were asphyxiated and quickly died; the resulting investigation uncovered mismanagement and issues at many different levels of NASA. Somewhat presciently, Gus Grissom had commented on exactly this kind of situation before his death: "If we die," he wrote, "we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us, it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life."

NASA

The crew of Apollo 1: Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. All three were killed on January 27, 1967 by a fire during what was supposed to have been a routine ground test of the Block 1 Apollo command and service module. In order to simulate the vehicle's pressure while in vacuum, the cabin was pressurized with 16.7 PSI of pure oxygen. A tiny spark from frayed wiring rapidly transformed the capsule's interior into an inferno. The crew were asphyxiated and quickly died; the resulting investigation uncovered mismanagement and issues at many different levels of NASA. Somewhat presciently, Gus Grissom had commented on exactly this kind of situation before his death: "If we die," he wrote, "we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us, it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life."

NASA

Wernher Von Braun and President Kennedy at Cape Canaveral, discussing one of the early Saturn rockets being built. Von Braun was a former German scientist, rescued (though some might say stolen) from Germany at the end of World War II and put to work on the US' rocketry program. He spearheaded the design effort that resulted in the massive Saturn V rocket.

NASA

Standing more than 400 feet tall atop the Crawler Transporter and its mobile launcher, the Saturn V and red Launch Utility Tower are wheeled slowly out of the Vertical Assembly Building (later renamed the Vehicle Assembly Building in the shuttle era) at Cape Kennedy, Florida.

NASA

Apollo 11 blast off from the pad at Launch Complex 39A on July 16, 1969. With Apollo 11, NASA managed to meet Kennedy's challenge to land on the moon at the end of the decade with several months to spare.

In one of the most famous and most reproduced photographs ever taken, Buzz Aldrin stands in the foreground at Mare Tranquillitatis. Visible in his gold-plated visor is Neil Armstrong, who took the photo.

NASA

The view out of Neil Armstrong's landing window in Eagle. Flag and footprints are clearly visible. Also of note is the abnormally close horizon; the moon's small diameter plays havoc with our Earth-developed ability to estimate distances.

NASA

Buzz Aldrin's footprint in the regolith. This is another widely reproduced iconic photo.

NASA

Neil Armstrong, shortly after returning to Eagle's cabin. The Ohio native was just shy of his 38th birthday when he commanded the first lunar landing.

NASA

Earthrise, taken from Apollo 11's command module Columbia.

NASA

In yet another reminder that nothing about space travel is routine, flight directors huddle in MOCR2 discussing the stricken Apollo 13 mission. While in transit to the moon, one of the spacecraft's oxygen tanks exploded, crippling the command and service module.

NASA

The Apollo 13 crew used their lunar module, Aquarius, as a temporary lifeboat during the mission. Aquarius couldn't handle the amount of carbon dioxide exhaled by all three astronauts and, quite famously, couldn't use the command module's extra scrubber cartridges because they were square while the lunar module's were round. NASA engineers very quickly designed a makeshift method to connect the square cartridges to the round receptacles, using only the materials the crew had access to on board. This is famously dramatized in Ron Howard's film, Apollo 13: "We gotta find a way to make this fit into the hole for this using nothing but that."

NASA

Only after returning to earth and preparing for re-entry did the magnitude of the damage to the Apollo 13 service module become apparent. The exploding oxygen tank had shredded one entire quadrant of the service module; it was feared right up to splashdown that the explosion had also damaged the spacecraft's heat shield. Fortunately it had not, and the crew returned safely. Apollo 13 has come to be known as "NASA's finest hour" due to the resourcefulness demonstrated by engineers and management in returning the crew alive and unharmed.

A space pickup truck and a house to live in

Apollo, for all its awesome achievements, was executed with effectively unlimited funds—and because of that, in spite of its success, the program was quickly terminated. It has been famously lamented by more than one astronaut and by several scientists that NASA stopped going to the moon just as they were getting really good at it.

Several programs made use of surplus Apollo hardware—the Skylab program launched a space station made up of a Saturn V's S-IVB upper stage into orbit and used Apollo spacecraft to ferry crew to it; the final Apollo flight was the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, where a US and Soviet spacecraft docked in orbit and the crew exchanged symbolic gifts and ate a meal together.

But the future, NASA felt, was in reusable spacecraft. All previous US spacecraft had been single-shot affairs, but in order to make access to space truly affordable, NASA envisioned their next craft as fully reusable end-to-end. It would launch like a rocket, ferry people or cargo to space, land like a plane, be refitted, and launch again days later. NASA initially wanted this Space Transport System, or STS, to fly dozens of times in any given month. Space flight would become safe, cheap, and routine.

Of course, the Space Shuttle never flew dozens of times per month—or even dozens of times per year. The resulting vehicle was designed with input from lots of government agencies, including the NRO and the Air Force, as NASA hoped to drive down its aggregate launch costs by hauling military payloads to orbit along with civilian ones.

In January 1986, the world was reminded that space travel was not routine when the shuttle Challenger was destroyed on launch. As with the Apollo 1 fire, the problem ultimately had its roots in NASA's management and culture more than in the technical. Unusually cold temperatures the morning before Challenger's launch caused rubber gaskets in its solid rocket motors to become brittle. The temperatures were far below those in which the gaskets had been designed to operate, but NASA management approved the launch anyway. Seven men and women, including a teacher, lost their lives in the accident.

The shuttle program continued, and its goals evolved. After struggling through many different design iterations, NASA and several other countries began work on the International Space Station (ISS), which would go on to become one of the most expensive construction projects in the history of the world. The ISS relied on the lifting capacity of the Space Shuttle fleet to move its parts into orbit (though a station of similar mass could have been lofted by just five Saturn V rockets rather than the dozens and dozens of shuttle flights necessary). More than twice as many spacewalks than had previously occurred in the entire history of space flight were required to bolt the ISS's modules together. The station slowly grew from a pair of docked modules to a sprawling complex bigger than an American football field.

The era of the shuttle drew to a close, but not without a final tragedy. Columbia, the oldest of the orbiter fleet (except for poor mothballed Enterprise) was destroyed on February 1, 2003. Columbia was lost due to a design decision made early in the shuttle program: a piece of foam sheared off of its external tank and collided with the fragile panels on the leading edge of its left wing, which in turn allowed superheated plasma to infiltrate its structure during re-entry. The shuttle's position next to its tankage instead of on top of it, as all previous spacecraft were placed, contributed more than anything else to the accident.

Once again, seven men and women died. I remember attending the memorial service at the Johnson Space Center. It was a hard day.

In spite of tragedy, the program marched on. The remaining shuttle fleet completed construction on the International Space Station, which is even now whizzing along above our heads, still alive, doing science.

NASA

After Apollo, NASA used the leftover hardware for several different stopgap missions. One of the most ambitious was Skylab, which was a space station made out of a Saturn V S-IVB upper stage. More surplus Apollo spacecraft were used to crew and service Skylab. The station was manned from 1973 to 1974 and de-orbited in 1979.

NASA

After Apollo, NASA used the leftover hardware for several different stopgap missions. One of the most ambitious was Skylab, which was a space station made out of a Saturn V S-IVB upper stage. More surplus Apollo spacecraft were used to crew and service Skylab. The station was manned from 1973 to 1974 and de-orbited in 1979.

NASA

Former Mercury astronaut Deke Slayton never got his chance to fly in the Mercury days—he was grounded because of a recurring atrial fibrillation and ran NASA's astronaut corps as chief astronaut, where he selected the crews that flew the Apollo missions. The final Apollo flight in 1975 was to be a joint US-USSR rendezvous named the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project; after undergoing a lengthy medical check-out, Slayton somewhat controversially selected himself as one of the crew (though not as the mission's commander). After the longest ever delay between selection and mission assignment, Slayton finally got his gold astronaut wings.

NASA

OV-101, the first spacecraft to be named Enterprise, conducts an approach and landing test in 1977. Enterprise—so named as a result of a letter writing campaign conducted by Star Trek fans—flew on her own a total of five times in 1977 and allowed astronauts to practice gliding the space shuttle to a landing. She was also used to perform fit and structural tests for other shuttle stack components and to check out the fit of shuttle hardware at launch sites.

NASA

Columbia takes flight as STS-01, the inaugural lift-off of the space shuttle program. Initially, the space shuttle's external tank was painted white (both for heat resistance and also to match the rest of the vehicle), but after the first two flights NASA dropped the paint in order to save several hundred pounds of weight.

NASA

Columbia glides overhead on final approach as her second mission, STS-02, comes to an end.

NASA

Photo of Challenger during STS-7, taken by the Space Pallet Satellite after being released from the cargo bay.

NASA

Astronaut Bruce McCandless II floats farther away from his spacecraft than any other astronaut has before or since. McCandless was testing the Manned Maneuvering Unit, a jet-powered backpack intended to let astronauts move around in EVA untethered. In this famous image, from STS-41B, McCandless is approximately 320 feet (97 meters) away from Challenger

NASA

Image of ice on the pad on the morning of January 28, 1986. The unexpectedly cold weather was outside of the operational parameters of the solid rocket boosters' large rubber gaskets ("O-rings"), but NASA management elected to fly anyway.

NASA

In this image taken moments before Challenger's disintegration, burn-through from the failing O-ring is clearly visible. The plume of propellent extended horizontally from the site of the failure, puncturing the external tank. The shuttle stack quickly broke apart; evidence suggests that the crew was likely alive and possibly even conscious during the interminable, horrifying 165-second plunge to the surface of the ocean.

No pause lasts forever. NASA put its house in order and got back to flying. Here, Atlantis rockets away from the pad as STS-27. This was the second flight after the hiatus brought about by the Challenger disaster.

NASA

The space shuttle does what only the space shuttle can do. Discovery services the Hubble Space Telescope on STS-82, replacing many of the telescope's sensors. Servicing satellites on-orbit was one of the many initial design goals of the shuttle; the enormous cost of shuttle operations eventually made this capability less economical than simply launching new satellites. However, on rare occasions like with the Hubble, the shuttle was exactly the right tool for the job.

NASA

The oldest member of the fleet, Columbia, was lost on February 1, 2003. I was working at Boeing at the time, and I was one of many who dropped flowers off at this memorial at the main gate outside of the Johnson Space Center. On February 4, I was also among the hundreds who gathered at JSC to attend the memorial service. At the end, a flight of T-38s screamed barely 200 feet overhead in the Missing Man formation. I will remember the sights and sounds of that moment for the rest of my life.

NASA

After Columbia, shuttles began to perform an elaborate pirouette as they approached the International Space Station for docking. The purpose was to present every portion of the shuttle to the ISS crew for visual inspection to make sure no chunks of foam had nicked any tiles. Here, Discovery serenely keeps station just off of the ISS while the crew looks her over for damage.

NASA

STS-130 was the penultimate flight of Endeavour and also the final night launch of the shuttle program. I was lucky enough to be in attendance at the STS-130 launch, and I got to see Endeavour fling herself skyward with my own eyes. As she pierced the cloud layer, light from her rockets instantly diffused through the clouds and brought a brief false dawn to the Florida coast.

NASA

From small beginnings, great things are grown. Here, in December 1998, the US-built Unity module ("Node 1") is docked to the Russian Zarya Functional Cargo Block. It was the first component connection for the International Space Station.

NASA

Construction proceeded apace for more than ten years, and the billions of dollars began to multiply. In December 2000, the station had gained many more modules, including the first of four enormous wing-like solar panels.

NASA

Building the ISS required a tremendous amount of training; astronauts (and cosmonauts) from assorted countries learned a tremendous amount about construction techniques in microgravity.

NASA

Here, two astronauts work on one of the station's Integrated Truss Structure modules. The truss is the ISS' most visually recognizable component and stretches across the station's transverse axis. It holds the station's solar panels, radiators, and many other structures.

NASA

The ISS in 2011, with most of its core component modules in place.

Ever faithful: Far-flung robotic servants

For all the glamour of astronauts and their flags and footprints, there is another hugely important aspect of NASA: its robotic probes and spacecraft. If manned space flight stirs the soul, robot space flight has expanded the mind. A comprehensive accounting of the probes and robots dispatched by NASA would fill its own huge, long-form article; we can focus on just a few.

The two Voyager spacecraft, best-known of NASA's deep space probes, passed through the outer planets and delivered stunning imagery and data. They will be the first man-made objects to leave the solar system.

Before Voyager, the twin Pioneer probes charted the outer solar system and beamed back their own images and observations; taken together, Pioneer and Voyager are the most distant objects that have been touched by human hands.

And, of course, we must make mention of the wildly successful—and wildly popular—Mars rovers. Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, and now Curiosity—no collection of machines have received as much adulation and praise as those little cars on Mars. Even if humans have for now ceased leaving the confines of our world, we still explore through our surrogates.

NASA

Pioneer 10 in 1971. The spacecraft was one of the first man-made objects to visit the outer solar system.

NASA

Pioneer 10 in 1971. The spacecraft was one of the first man-made objects to visit the outer solar system.

NASA

Drawing of the plaque affixed to the Pioneer probe's exteriors. The plaque uses the hyperfine transition of hydrogen to define units of time, which are then used to describe the position of our solar system relative to 14 pulsars (with their frequency described in binary notation derived from the hyperfine transition). Also visible are a nude man and woman, positioned next to a rough representation of the Pioneer spacecraft for scale.

NASA

The much larger, much more capable Voyager probes followed Pioneer. Voyager 1 and 2 were constructed to take advantage of a "grand conjunction" of the solar system's outer planets—the planets' relative proximity to each other made it possible to fly by many of them in a single visit.

NASA

The Voyager probes were equipped with a "Golden Record," inscribed with voices, music, and sounds from Earth. The cover of the record, shown here, featured instructions on how to play the record with its included cartridge, and also how to interpret the video images contained on the disk. The Golden Record contained the same pulsar-based map on how to locate our solar system, but it did not show the same naked man and woman figures; their inclusion on the Pioneer plaques drew public criticism over pornography in space. (Seriously.)

NASA

The Voyager spacecraft returned a veritable cornucopia of data on the outer planets, including stunning images of Jupiter and Saturn.

NASA

The next visitor to the Jupiter system was the Galileo probe in 1995. The probe was originally scheduled to be launched on Atlantis in 1986, but the Challenger disaster postponed it for many years. Finally launched in 1989, Galileo spent eight years doing science around Jupiter.

NASA

NASA has spent a lot of attention on Mars, our nearest planetary neighbor. The Viking probes were the first American spacecraft to touch down on the red planet; shown here is an image sent back from Viking 2 from its landing spot at Utopia Planitia.

NASA

The twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity made big headlines when they reached the Martian surface in 2004. Originally designed for only 90 "sols" (Martian days) of operation, both rovers clobbered their expected design life. Spirit's mission was officially ended on May 25 2011, while Opportunity continues to soldier bravely on.

NASA

This is an image of a rock named "Esperance," taken by Opportunity. Analysis of the rock's mineral content points to the likelihood that it was altered by water at some point in the distant past.

NASA

The Mars Science Laboratory Rover, Curiosity, under construction in late 2011 at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in California. Curiosity is the largest, most sophisticated planetary rover ever constructed.

NASA

A "selfie" taken by Curiosity (actually assembled from a mosaic of selfies). The rover captured the public's imagination with its daring, Rube Goldberg-ian skycrane touchdown on Mars.

The next 55 years

The future for NASA is complex. I'm a fan of space—in case you haven't figured that out yet—but NASA is an agency undergoing a crisis of leadership. There is no clear mission for NASA's manned space flight directorate, and that lack of mission can be blamed squarely on Congress and on NASA's administrators. There is no inspiring plan, no consistent messaging, no sensible goal, and, most damning, there is insufficient funding to accomplish any mission of significance (and a manned asteroid landing, the agency's current, vaguely stated goal, is not a mission of significance in my opinion).

If this set of image galleries seems biased toward the glories of the past, there is reason: NASA is not now what it was. Decades of stagnation and bad leadership across multiple levels of management have caused the agency to take on the aspect of a nursing-home-bound pensioner—once lively and spry and able to accomplish literally anything, and now plodding forward while spending an inordinate amount of time recalling past glories. My generation, raised in the 1980s and 90s, has had no moon shot—no triumph of science and imagination. Instead, we've been able to see mankind venture timidly back and forth into low Earth orbit, never even leaving its own front yard. It is more than disappointing—it's dispiriting.

I expect more from an agency whose mission by its very nature is designed to generate awe. NASA is failing, and it deserves to be saved.

Great photos and write-up! I'm less pessimistic about the future of NASA; in a recent interview Neil deGrasse Tyson compared current spaceflight to water-going vessels thousands of years ago. He noted that we spent hundreds or thousands of years in the rivers and near shore before building ocean-going vessels. This resonates with me; manned trips to Mars and Europa will come in time.

Beautiful tribute, Lee. My wife and I just watched the last couple episodes of "When We Left Earth" last night, and I can't help but worry that the past tense in the title will remain an accurate connotation for far too long.

I thought my browser was broken after the first set of photos, thinking "that couldn't have been 55 already..." clicking furiously on the right arrow without the picture changing.. then I scrolled down.

I thought my browser was broken after the first set of photos, thinking "that couldn't have been 55 already..." clicking furiously on the right arrow without the picture changing.. then I scrolled down.

Let me describe the genesis of this article.

Nate: Hey, I'm thinking of doing this gallery—55 images for 55 years of NASA.

Me: Oh, hey, great idea! Make sure you include some stuff from the Apollo lunar surface journal! Oh, and from the spaceflight gallery! Have you thought about how to segment the piece up? You could do, llike, four—no, five—no six!—no, I guess, five major groupings, by era, you know, starting with Mercury and Gemini. There are some great Gemini images floating around out there, holy crap! And—man, I've got this great image of Enterprise I found on one of the NASA sites, hold on, let me dig it up. This might be too much for one gallery, too—like, maybe actually do one gallery for each era, so more people will see the images without getting bored and giving up. And make sure to include some text, too, to tie it all together. Like, talk about the genesis of each program, what led to what—just the major stuff, right, nothing too deep...

(and a manned asteroid landing, the agency's current vaguely-stated goal, is not a mission of significance).

WhyTF not? Have you seen the moon? That sucker's HUGE! You almost can't miss it. Landing on the moon would be like Charles Lindbergh setting out across the Atlantic with the goal of coming down "someplace East of the US." A manned landing on an asteroid would be like Lindbergh saying, "yeah, I'll fly to Europe. And I'll land on the top of a route 11 double-decker bus at its Aldwych stop, 5:15 am local time." Which is especially impressive because double-decker buses wouldn't enter service until 1956. It takes some swagger, 's what I'm sayin'.

"What will be the next thing that challenges us, Toby? That makes us go farther and work harder? Do you know that when smallpox was eradicated, it was considered the single greatest humanitarian achievement of this century? Surely we can do it again, as we did in the times when our eyes looked towards the heavens and, with outstretched fingers, we touched the face of God. Here's to absent friends and the ones that are here now. Cheers." -President Josiah Bartlet

I thought my browser was broken after the first set of photos, thinking "that couldn't have been 55 already..." clicking furiously on the right arrow without the picture changing.. then I scrolled down.

Let me describe the genesis of this article.

Nate: Hey, I'm thinking of doing this gallery—55 images for 55 years of NASA.

Me: Oh, hey, great idea! Make sure you include some stuff from the Apollo lunar surface journal! Oh, and from the spaceflight gallery! Have you thought about how to segment the piece up? You could do, llike, four—no, five—no six!—no, I guess, five major groupings, by era, you know, starting with Mercury and Gemini. There are some great Gemini images floating around out there, holy crap! And—man, I've got this great image of Enterprise I found on one of the NASA sites, hold on, let me dig it up. This might be too much for one gallery, too—like, maybe actually do one gallery for each era, so more people will see the images without getting bored and giving up. And make sure to include some text, too, to tie it all together. Like, talk about the genesis of each program, what led to what—just the major stuff, right, nothing too deep...

I thought my browser was broken after the first set of photos, thinking "that couldn't have been 55 already..." clicking furiously on the right arrow without the picture changing.. then I scrolled down.

Let me describe the genesis of this article.

Nate: Hey, I'm thinking of doing this gallery—55 images for 55 years of NASA.

Me: Oh, hey, great idea! Make sure you include some stuff from the Apollo lunar surface journal! Oh, and from the spaceflight gallery! Have you thought about how to segment the piece up? You could do, llike, four—no, five—no six!—no, I guess, five major groupings, by era, you know, starting with Mercury and Gemini. There are some great Gemini images floating around out there, holy crap! And—man, I've got this great image of Enterprise I found on one of the NASA sites, hold on, let me dig it up. This might be too much for one gallery, too—like, maybe actually do one gallery for each era, so more people will see the images without getting bored and giving up. And make sure to include some text, too, to tie it all together. Like, talk about the genesis of each program, what led to what—just the major stuff, right, nothing too deep...

It's an urban legend. NASA didn't pay a dime for the research and development of the pens, and Russia started buying the same pens shortly after the U.S. did. The price NASA paid for the pens? $2.95 each.

great piece, lee, inspiring. and while i agree with your summation points on lack of direction and most especially, funding (what a crime - literally a societal crime - that we spend so much money on our capabilities for killing people, and so comparatively little on scientific exploration and education.. embarrassing on a galactic level..), i think even though we haven't been back to the moon, and mars seems oh so far away, and asteroid landings are super unsexy (that is a nominal goal i feel only because of the still inchoate linkages possible between space exploration and commercial mineral exploitation.. also pretty embarrassing).. the existence and perseverance of the ISS program, and its SPECTACULAR accomplishments, cannot be under-valued in terms of overall contribution to the humans in space program. we are learning a tremendous amount about living and working in micro-g, zero atmos environments that will carry us forward to mars habitation and outer solar system human exploration--very fundamental and necessary first steps, and while not as rahrahrah as landing on planets, every bit as crucial in the overall scheme of space exploration.

so, yes, as massively disappointing as nasa's current level of attention from congress is for all of us, i don't find it dispiriting exactly, and in some ways nasa's leadership should be thanked for managing some pretty amazing stuff while stuck under a pretty heavy thumb of ignorance. LEO activity is still good and important science, and soon this country will get its priorities in order and get moving in the right direction again. it seems it will take the competitive push of private business to break us free perhaps; musk and branson, et al., thank goodness for rich nerds.

I just watched the Discovery series "When We Left Earth" this week. It was amazing. At some point, I'd like to see a manned mission to Mars, but I'd also like to see manned missions to the Moon as well. It makes me just a little sad that we haven't been to the Moon at all in my lifetime, being as I was born after the last Apollo mission.

Challenger was something that struck me pretty hard, my school made a big deal out of the launch because of Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher to be sent into space. Needless to say, my entire school watched the disaster live on TV. When We Left Earth's part on the Challenger was pretty amazing, especially when it showed mission control from just before the launch through the failure. I actually had goosebumps.

Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia, 3 missions doomed, but paving the way for safer spaceflight.

I wish more of my tax dollars went to NASA. Many of their inventions have made life much easier for us here on Earth, and I do believe none of them have been the subject of a patent lawsuit.

(and a manned asteroid landing, the agency's current vaguely-stated goal, is not a mission of significance).

WhyTF not? Have you seen the moon? That sucker's HUGE! You almost can't miss it. Landing on the moon would be like Charles Lindbergh setting out across the Atlantic with the goal of coming down "someplace East of the US." A manned landing on an asteroid would be like Lindbergh saying, "yeah, I'll fly to Europe. And I'll land on the top of a route 11 double-decker bus at its Aldwych stop, 5:15 am local time." Which is especially impressive because double-decker buses wouldn't enter service until 1956. It takes some swagger, 's what I'm sayin'.

Mars is the little green men, the source of many science-fiction stories, films,... The inspiration that comes from a manned landing on it is much more important than a random small piece of rock, however technical and accurate the landing on an asteroid would be. With Mars, however unrealistic that is, colonization of another planet is also something that comes up sooner or later.By the way, landing on Mars is landing on a planet with enough gravity to require lots of power to slow down, with enough atmosphere to risk burning a craft but not enough to slow it down with parachutes and it seems the martian dust is also a problem. So if technical challenge is your stuff, Mars ought to provide quite a lot, and I've not even mentioned the quantity of radiations spationauts would receive during such a long space trip.

Now, if landing people on an asteroid happens, it would still be an awesome event that would prompt me to take vacations just to see it on TV whatever the hour.

Nice write-up and pics; thanks. I will quibble with you, the author, on your conclusion about Congress. NASA's greatest achievement --in my view, the lunar missions-- were do in no small measure because of a challenge and proclamation by President John F Kennedy. In other words, the mission needs to be heralded from the top, and from the person with the bully pulpit. And he/she has to mean it, not just pay lip service.

Of course, there was that very significant Cold War going on during the time of the lunar missions, which provided a very large impetus to succeed and be first; something we don't have now. And NASA took a huge hit when it made what appeared to many to be a political decision to launch the ill-fated Challenger mission, even after the o-ring manufacturer warned against doing so (if one is to believe the history as it's been documented).

I also wonder if the currents heads of NASA and the Government have read it., because I think they should.

EDIT : For us non-US readers, could someone say what the current NASA budget is, and what percentage that is of total US Government spending?Also, how does that compare to the annual budgets for Military/Defense, education, healthcare (or any other dept that you choose) would be helpful.I'm not after a political opinion, just some numbers to help the rest of us put things into context.Thanks very much :-)

the existence and perseverance of the ISS program, and its SPECTACULAR accomplishments, cannot be under-valued in terms of overall contribution to the humans in space program. we are learning a tremendous amount about living and working in micro-g, zero atmos environments that will carry us forward to mars habitation and outer solar system human exploration--very fundamental and necessary first steps, and while not as rahrahrah as landing on planets, every bit as crucial in the overall scheme of space exploration.

I couldn't agree more. Before we go putting human beings on somewhere like Mars we need to be very clear about why we're doing it and what we expect them to achieve while they're there. This means we need to generate extensive knowlege of how people can live and perform useful work in alien environments.

The Apollo program was about putting a Man on the Moon just to show that we could, but then they suddenly realised they had to put their astronauts through a geology crash course so there was something to do while they were there. For Mars we need to put the cart after the horse instead and be prepared with a list of meaningful tasks that genuinely require human presence. And that means learning about how far we can push the human body in these environments.

A Mars program whose aim was nothing more than stepping out of the capsule for a few hours to leave some footprints and snap some pictures would be a travesty and a colossal waste of money. It needs to be focussed on long-term missions that are worth the months of travel needed and will bring back a wealth of data.

From a scientific perspective, the past two decades of NASA have been a massively resounding success: Hubble, COBE, WMAP and other satellites have redefined cosmology; Voyager, Cassini, Spirit/Opportunity and Curiosity are still producing incredible data. The manned spaceflight program, ultimately, needs to meet or exceed this level of quality in terms of the results they bring back.

Curiously, and slightly off-topic, in my experience space enthusiasm seems to be inversely proportional to one's distance from Houston, TX, or Bangalore, India. Apart from the USA, I've spent most of my life in two other countries which both have sent people in space, but most folks there don't seem to give a damn.

Curiously, and slightly off-topic, in my experience space enthusiasm seems to be inversely proportional to one's distance from Houston, TX, or Bangalore, India. Apart from the USA, I've spent most of my life in two other countries which both have sent people in space, but most folks there don't seem to give a damn.

I find it hard to tell the general interest in space exploration in the UK, but I am very interested and I love all the space articles on Ars, not just for the quality of the articles, but also the comments.

I'd just like to completely disagree with Lee. A manned asteroid mission would be of great significance. Going to the Moon helped us understand how the Moon got here. Going to an asteroid will tell us about how the entire Solar System got here.

I thought my browser was broken after the first set of photos, thinking "that couldn't have been 55 already..." clicking furiously on the right arrow without the picture changing.. then I scrolled down.

Let me describe the genesis of this article.

Nate: Hey, I'm thinking of doing this gallery—55 images for 55 years of NASA.

Me: Oh, hey, great idea! Make sure you include some stuff from the Apollo lunar surface journal! Oh, and from the spaceflight gallery! Have you thought about how to segment the piece up? You could do, llike, four—no, five—no six!—no, I guess, five major groupings, by era, you know, starting with Mercury and Gemini. There are some great Gemini images floating around out there, holy crap! And—man, I've got this great image of Enterprise I found on one of the NASA sites, hold on, let me dig it up. This might be too much for one gallery, too—like, maybe actually do one gallery for each era, so more people will see the images without getting bored and giving up. And make sure to include some text, too, to tie it all together. Like, talk about the genesis of each program, what led to what—just the major stuff, right, nothing too deep...

Almost sounds like when the US spent all that money on the space pen to write in 0 gravity, and the Russians used pencils instead. Of course one is much cooler than the other.

Yes the Russians used pencils, and as a result they didn't make it to the moon.

"And as a result" ?!?

Wow, the lack of ability for the Ars general crowd to separate CAUSATION from CORRELATION is appalling - even more considering that Ars articles in general tend to remind it's readers of that difference. Mostly

I suggest a more thorough review of the US/USSR interactions from around 1943 - 1990.

This would include the only attempt by one to invade/attack the other ( 1946? when US 'invaded' the Soviet East coast with a few ships ... "Testing the waters" it was called ).It would include forming a large alliance of allies (NATO) on the border of the USSR - not a particularly friendly effort It would include the constant and OVERT posture of offensive first strike maintained by the US / NATOin which to maintain a corresponding military response plan/spending within the USSR.It would include that wonderfully expensive pie in the sky StarWars programs to fully bankrupt the USSR.

Don't get your panties in a bunch -- I'm not pretending the Soviet system was in any way near perfect, let's just not pretend we weren't the major reason for it's financial collapse as a result of the Space and Arms Races.

ps: I leave the source finding mission of verification on the above a reader exercise. It should take a competent googler/wikipedia-searcher about fifteen minutes.

Sadly Lee Hutchinson blames various administrations ( Government and NASA ) as a core source of the decline.

I would suggest the greater blame lies with the American Public, and the focus of mentality which people made in the early '80s towards "getting themselves rich" rather than "enriching themselves." This trend didn't start in the 1980s, but it did get much stronger and wide spread.

This has resulted in _individuals_ working their way up the corporate ladder increasing corporate profits to the max for their own gains ... Resulted in _individuals_ using their position in government for personal gain ...Created a couple generations of _individuals_ who perceive the purpose of a grocery store is to browse the latest "Headlines" on the various skin mags lining the checkout stands. That is, _individuals_ who should be labeled hedonists, _Individuals_ who are happy to be labeled as Consumers, rather than Citizens.

I'd just like to completely disagree with Lee. A manned asteroid mission would be of great significance. Going to the Moon helped us understand how the Moon got here. Going to an asteroid will tell us about how the entire Solar System got here.

Far be it for me to disagree with DrJ—who is an actual for-real doctor—but we'll have to agree to disagree here, at least as with using an asteroid as a flagship manned mission. NASA's talents are better spent elsewhere and an asteroid mission is a "marking time" do-nothing dead end. I'll defer to Norm Augustine and his panel's findings for justification on this, as the current asteroid plan is a cut-back limited bastardized version of the already unpalatable "flexible path" option presented in the report.

There's certainly some scientific value in it, but should it be the focus of the manned program at the expense of all other potential goals? Absolutely not.

NASA did an amazing job getting us into space, but I see their future not in manned space travel, but in unmanned probes and vehicles. These are the things that cost less and provide no profit incentive for private companies to get into. The risk is small, and the scientific payoff is often large.

Private companies will take over most of the manned missions. NASA gave them the technological start, and the profit is there to make them want to go places. Maybe millionaires will be the first Mars explorers as tourists. Not ideal, but better than no one going at all. Unless it leads to a whole Weyland Corporation thing. I like my stomach in tact thank you very much.

NASA still has some neat things in the works but it's in a transistional phase. NASA isn't about rushing new things out partially due to funding, more importantly due to safety. As you have mentioned in the article rushing things probably wasn't the best for NASA:

Quote:

Project Apollo flew toward its goal with sure feet—until the entire program was halted with the deaths of Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee in the Apollo 1 fire. Critically called "a failure of imagination," the fire was technically the result of frayed wiring sparking in an environment of pure, pressurized oxygen—but more correctly, the fire was the result of NASA management and engineers moving too fast to meet what seemed like an impossible end-of-decade deadline.

What's in the works is exciting to me, the Orion capsule and SLS (Space Launch System). Yes the development could probably have been made faster with more funding but it's still not something to rush. Private companies like SpaceX as well as a partnership with Russia is supporting the ISS currently while NASA spends it's allocations on developing this system.

As a side note (more directed at Ars rather than the author) the image galleries' captions are very hard to read on some of the photos due to the white text with a photo as the background. It would probably be better if the caption was below the photo rather than ontop of it.

Lee Hutchinson / Lee is the Senior Reviews Editor at Ars and is responsible for the product news and reviews section. He also knows stuff about enterprise storage, security, and manned space flight. Lee is based in Houston, TX.